


Requiem

by Hope



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-04
Updated: 2005-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:45:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River dies in her sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem

River dies in her sleep. Afterwards, Simon thinks he should have known, should have _felt_ something (_she_ would have, had it been him, he's sure of it), but as it was, he slept late. Woke up gradually, to silence. Head muggy with sleep, he'd knocked on the door to her bunk before entering. Her body, still; resting on her side with hair spread out on the pillow. Stiff, as he put his hand on her shoulder. Cold.

After a while, he realises someone's talking to him. There's a dull ache in his neck when he turns his head to look to the doorway, a sharp pain where his knees grind against the hard floor, a heaviness where he's lost all sensation in his feet.

"Doc," Mal says again, and it must be again, though his tone doesn't show any impatience. He's barely aware of Kaylee hovering behind the captain, face pale and tear-washed. "What's the diagnosis?"

"She's dead," his own voice doesn't sound like he expected it to sound; there's nothing stuck in his throat, there's just... nothing. When he looks back to River's face the colour of it strikes him anew; chalk-white skin and dusty purple lips, eyelids. Dark red; a drop of blood beneath one nostril.

"Anything we need to be worrying about?"

Simon breathes, feeling aware of each molecule of recyc air as it scrapes over the back of his tongue, through his throat, into his lungs.

"Anything contagious?"

"No," and he looks away from her again. "It was... The drugs. The ones I gave her last night." He can move again, touch his hand to where her hair meets her forehead; skin so cold, hair so soft, so light. "Her reaction... I didn't know that they..." his fingers catch in a tangle, the head moves sluggishly at the pull.

Mal doesn't move. "You just sit tight, then," he says.

Later, the Shepherd comes, and turns River onto her back, and folds her arms over her chest. He and Zoë lift her onto one of the stretchers that usually hangs in the cargo bay. Her eyes are still closed. "She looks very peaceful," Book says; Zoë says nothing. The room is just the same after they've left, and Simon wonders if he's still asleep.

"The way I see it," Mal says later on, voice still soft and measured but strong enough to carry to everyone spread about the mess area; in various stances but all focussed on where he stands near the doorway, "we have a few options ahead of us here. One," he continues after a pause, glancing around at each of them in turn. "Burial at sea. We drop her out of the airlock." Another pause. "Gets burned up in our thrusters or reattaches herself to the next biggest thing to come along."

_Little moon,_ Simon thinks, incongruously, remembering a near-infant River determined to teach him the best strategic manoeuvres for his toy Alliance soldiers to defeat the Independents. _Satellite._

"Two. We take her back to the world. The nearest, or the safest, or whichever one we deem the most worthy. Hold an old-fashioned burial.

"Three," here Mal pauses again, turning his gaze to focus on Simon. "We find a way to hand her body over to the Alliance." The only sound is the dull _clang_-shift as the air vents over and around them begin another re-circ cycle. "Maybe when they get back what they've been lookin' so hard for, the hunt will ease somewhat on our good doctor here."

Jayne opens his mouth to speak and Mal shuts it just as rapidly, with a sharp glance that both knows exactly what Jayne has in mind and forbids him to say it aloud. Simon thinks he knows as well, and feels sick.

"The other thing to consider--" Mal continues, then pauses, shifts a little uncomfortably.

Zoë finishes the sentence for him, "--Is whether the Doc wants to do an autopsy on her first."

Kaylee makes a small noise, then begins to speak, slowly, as if it's a struggle. "That's not... I don't think that..." Simon stares down, eyes unfocussed, blurring the scuffed floor into dull grey; patternless, meaningless.

"Seems to me that this is a perfect opportunity for the Doc to find out just what they did to his sister." Mal continues, tone not altering despite the open-mouthed look Kaylee is giving him. "Especially if he's of a mind to do something about it."

"_Now?_" Wash looks up from his visual interrogation of the worn tabletop. "Isn't it a bit late for--"

"Never too late for revenge," Jayne inserts, glancing up at Simon, Mal, before back down to where he's scratching at a stain on the thigh of his faded trousers, sprawled easily at the foot of the table.

"She wasn't exactly a valued member of your _crew_, captain," Simon says, almost before he realises he's even speaking. "I can hardly see your impetus to go on a vengeful rampage when your tradition leans more towards the 'cut and run' school of thought."

Mal's expression changes, finally, a minute tightening of his jaw, twitch of his mouth. "Ain't said nothing about no rampage," he says, softer still into the profound silence.

"I--" Simon's hands lift abortively, then again, palms dragging over his face, fingers digging briefly into his chin. "I'm sorry, I--"

"Ain't said nothing about my having anything to do with it, neither."

Simon freezes. Mal's face is unreadable. Simon's hands drop. "I see," he says at length. "If you'll excuse me, I need to... think over the options." He steps carefully, like he's wont to trip at any moment, hyper-aware of the tense silence behind him until he steps through the doorway.

He can still hear them clearly from a few steps down the walkway and around a bend, his own breath repressed low and shallow, hands held carefully, palm-flat, against an outcrop of the ship (one of many such convenient nooks Serenity sports), as if pressing too hard would soak up the vibration of the engine and interfere with his hearing.

They remain silent for a long moment; then Simon tenses as Mal's boots thud-clang purposefully against the floor, until he realises they're moving away from him.

"Captain--" Kaylee's voice, one word, wrung out and desperate, and Mal stops. "You really intend to just leave him somewhere?"

"No, Kaylee," Wash interjects, as if he's instructing her on something blatantly obvious. "We can't just dump _him_, he's the ship's doctor. You know? 'Valued crewmember'?"

"Some gorram doctor," Jayne grumbles. "Can't even keep his own sister alive, and she weren't even wounded."

"That ain't fair, Jayne," Kaylee sounds close to tears again. "She was hurt real bad, and the Doc was just trying to--"

"She seemed fine to me, aside from the usual craziness. No different from my sister when she got a fancy idea in her head on how to behave. Seems to me the Doc just got sick of cleanin' up after her and--"

"That's enough." Mal finally speaks again, cutting an abrupt halt to all verbal stirrings. "There ain't no doubt in my mind that River's death was _accidental_. Ain't no way the Doc would hurt anyone, leastways her."

"I've seen him hold his own," Jayne says, somewhat grudgingly, and Zoë makes a small noise of agreement.

"Ain't no way he'd hurt anyone aboard this _vessel_," Mal revises.

"Well she sure as hell ain't hurtin' now," there's a rough edge of sarcasm in Jayne's voice. "At least if she was still in that school she'd still be _alive_."

"_Jayne_," Mal's voice sharp again, but Jayne's already said his piece. "_How_ or _why_ River Tam died is not under discussion."

"Then what is, Mal?" Wash's voice, still with the raw edge but without the twist in it this time. "Seems you've made up your mind about everything that matters in this."

"Hey, _I'm_ not the one throwing around accusations that could ruin the professional career of our live-in doctor, here," the cracks spreading in Mal's reserve, tone shifting, breaking.

"At least if you were that would be _some_ indication that you care _at all_," Inara's voice, then, not bitter but low, firm, reverberating with sadness. "River was just as much a part of this crew as any one of us." Mal snorts, half-beginning to speak before Inara overrides; "And I don't want to hear that, Mal. This isn't about me." She pauses, takes a breath. Simon can hear Kaylee's muffled sniffle, but otherwise, silence. Inara continues, softer, "That girl suffered more at the hands of the Alliance than anyone else aboard this ship, regardless--" she stops the escalation, starts slower, quieter, "Regardless of who they fought, or what, or what colour their coats were."

"I ain't no charity--"

"No, Mal. But you'll carry some selfish footsoldier's body halfway across the 'Verse because he almost got himself killed beside you. Is it still too much to ask that--"

"That what?" Mal's voice is raised, finally, above hers; aggression if not anger finally made apparent. "I protected them for as long as I could, _beyond_ the call of duty, of which I had _none_, by the way--"

"Simon's still fighting, Mal," Inara's voice still soft, cutting short his tirade abruptly. "And I don't think he ever wanted any more than you did; a right for him and his own to live."

Simon steps away, footsteps quiet and measured on the metal grill. The blankets are pulled back on River's bunk, sheet rumpled against the flat mattress. There's a strand of long, dark hair half-coiled on the pillow. One of her dresses is in a just-stepped-out-of heap by the bed, so thin when he bunches it in his hands, so soft. It smells like the clean acid of apples, and faintly of bile; mainly of the harsh generic cleaner that services all the ship's textiles. It had been Kaylee's, one of several hand-me-downs that River had accumulated not long after they'd arrived on ship, mostly worn and faded, but she'd never minded the cold, where teeshirts or rolled-up sleeves had seemed rugged-up in comparison.

After a while, Mal comes and sits on the bed a little ways from Simon. The dress is still warm in Simon's fists; soft but inert.

"I was too harsh before." Mal's not one to apologise. "You are a part of my crew. And so was River. She will be missed."

Simon dips his head, a slow nod he doesn't rise from.

"But the fact still remains that, as the captain, I need to make some decisions 'round here.

"The first one being that, as long as it ain't going to place anyone else aboard this ship in jeopardy, it's up to you how and where we lay your sister to rest."

Mal pauses for a moment, as if expecting a response. "The second is that it's also up to you as to whether you want to stay a part of this crew yourself. And I won't lie to you, Doc," Mal gives a brief smile. "I ain't offerin' this because Kaylee batted her eyelashes at me. You come in handy for stitchin' up after we've been in a scrape, and you've proven to me that you also ain't weak, nor stupid, and are quite capable of scheming along with the best of us for the best ways to keep the coin in our pocket and fuel in Serenity's.

"And I won't lie," Mal's tone sobering down again, "and say that I ain't gonna help you if you decide vengeance is the right path for you to walk down after this. I ain't the bad guy here," he says, then pauses, thinks for a moment. "Well I am, but not in the way that--"

"I know," Simon murmurs, and Mal swallows, gives a brief nod. "And I... appreciate it." He can't continue. Mal smiles a little; Simon doesn't think he's ever felt more alone, floating in deep space, a tiny container of eight people so inextricably twined, so completely surrounded by nothing.

"Well," Mal stands, and the moment uncoils itself from Simon's heart, sinks down again, dormant. "I'll give you some time to make your decision. River's in the infirmary, the cryo casket--"

"I've made my decision." Simon looks up at last, and Mal turns, eyebrows raised a little. Simon's mouth twists, the smile feeling foreign but not unwelcome on his lips. "Let's be bad guys."

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/33103.html


End file.
